Appraising organizational politics and support: challenging employees to engage
Date
2018
Authors
Manning, Steven G., author
Byrne, Zinta, advisor
Fisher, Gwen, committee member
Rickard, Kathryn, committee member
Ganster, Dan, committee member
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Abstract
Organizational politics are an inevitable part of organizational life (Hochwarter, Ferris, Laird, Treadway, & Gallagher, 2010) and yet research has largely demonstrated that perceptions of politics are typically negative and, consequently, have a negative influence on employees (Bedi & Schat, 2013; Rosen & Hochwarter, 2014). Because politics are so prevalent – and indeed necessary – in organizations (e.g., Pfeffer, 1992), researchers have recently called for a broader perspective that considers the positive aspects of politics. Although some have forged new roads to examine the positive side of politics (Albrecht & Landells, 2012; Hochwarter, 2012), the journey has only just begun. Therefore, contributing to this line of research, the current study flips the focus on politics research from negative outcomes to positive by exploring when and how a negative perception of politics can lead to positive outcomes for employees and the organization. By experimentally manipulating participants' perceptions of politics and organizational support, I hypothesized that some work environments lead employees to perceive politics as a challenge stressor (Byrne, Manning, Weston, & Hochwarter, 2017; Cavanaugh, Boswell, Roehling, & Boudreau, 2000) encouraging them to act (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984) and increase engagement at work. Results of analyses using 258 participants demonstrates experimentally that organizational politics and organizational support impact participants' appraisals of the environment as challenging or hindering. Additionally, political environments are negatively associated with persisting on a frustrating task. This experimental study provides a nuanced and novel view of political environments without re-conceptualizing what organizational politics are, and helps to explain how employees perceive positive outcomes at work even though organizational politics are so prevalent and most often considered a negative influence at work.
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Subject
employee disengagement
hindrance appraisal
organizational support
employee engagement
challenge appraisal
organizational politics